


holding on to what we used to be (addicted to a memory)

by reachedthebitterend



Category: Roswell New Mexico - Fandom
Genre: M/M, The Magicians AU, warnings for possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 04:49:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reachedthebitterend/pseuds/reachedthebitterend
Summary: Alex will do anything to bring Michael back, even sacrifice himself || the magicians au





	holding on to what we used to be (addicted to a memory)

**Author's Note:**

> written 03/08/19

The memories don’t come all at once, and some of them leave him paralyzed at the worst times.

But the worst thing about them isn’t what he remembers, it’s opening his eyes and seeing Michael sitting across the room from him and feeling for one hopeful second that maybe it’s his Michael, and then having that Monster, smile a smile that would’ve never found itself on Michael’s face, and Alex _remembers_.

***

Isobel is the only one who can confirm that Alex is telling the truth.

Letting her into his head is one of the hardest things that he’s ever had to do, especially with the fact that he remembers an infinite number of timelines where he fell in love with Michael, and he remembers vividly one specific timeline that went on for an entire lifetime, where they didn’t die young and tragic but old and happy.

Isobel tears through his head like a tornado, and Alex tries to keep a lid on things and only show her what she needs to see to believe him, but she blows pass every single one of his wards with ease once he lowers the shield a little bit.

Alex freezes for a long moment and sees Michael crystal clear wrinkles lining his face, greying hair still falling to curls on his forehead, and he’s laughing and looking at Alex, and Alex feels loved, loved, _loved_.

He pushes Isobel back and she disengages from his head with a snap and a pained gasp.

He slams his shields back up and scrambles away from her, climbing over the back of the couch.

“Alex!” she calls out to him.

Alex ignores her and leaves the room.

***

Alex dreams of _heat_.

Michael’s hands warm and damp wrapped around his wrists pressing him down to the bed, hot damp air against his neck as Michael presses his face into Alex’s throat, panting and gasping and groaning, Michael’s thighs pressed on either side of his hips, sliding across the sweaty skin, Michael hot and tight around as he moved his hips slowly, like they had all of the time in the world because they did.

Alex wakes up sweaty, and hard, and aching, and wanting, and he turns in his bed and grasps at the empty side of the bed where Michael should be, but is not because Alex was too late and ruined everything before it even began. He buries his head in his pillow and cries.

***

Alex sits on the floor with his back against the couch. He watches as the flames from the fire in the fireplace throws shadows all along the walls that seem to be dancing in tune to the music that is literally shaking the walls.

The shadows could be enchanted or it could be the brownies that Liz and Isobel had made together. Which was still odd.

Liz and Isobel getting along. They’d spent so long at each other’s throats over Rosa that Alex still didn’t know how to feel about this truce they’d struck up.

“Are you going to stay inside all night?” Michael asks from behind him.

Alex doesn’t jump since he’d sensed Michael in the room about five minutes ago, but he is surprised that Michael is talking to him.

It’s been two weeks since they expelled the Monster from his body, and Alex swore that he was avoiding him, but that might have to do with the fact that Alex was most definitely avoiding Michael.

“I was planning on going to get a refill,” Alex says making to stand, but suddenly there is a drink floating on a small tray in front of him. The ice has melted just a little bit, and the tray wobbles a little, but it makes Alex smile.

Michael had been terrified of using his magic since before the Monster had taken him over.

He takes the drink gratefully, and feels Michael hopping over the side arm of the couch and sitting down. He leans down, resting his elbow right beside Alex’s head and tilts his drink to Alex’s.

“To surviving,” Michael says and taps their glasses together.

Alex taps his back to Michael’s. “To surviving.”

***

“Are you going to keep pretending that you don’t want me?” Michael asks and Alex almost trips and falls down the side of the river and into the rushing water.

They’ve been on this _quest_ for three days now, and they still haven’t found the place where they’re supposed to be building the mosaic to find the key.

“I don’t-” he tries to say, but Michael makes a rude noise at the back of his throat and tugs Alex away from the edge of the river and right up against a nearby tree.

Alex feels the rough bark against his back, and Michael presses in close stopping inches away from his mouth.

“It would make this thing go by much faster if you just give in now, but I know you’re scared, so I’m willing to wait, but you do realize that this has been the longest amount of time we have spent alone together since you woke up naked in my bed?”

Alex swallows hard.

“It’s kind of driving me crazy,” Michael admits voice low.

***

They have a plan, made by a still feuding Liz and Isobel, but they’d put aside their differences and grudges to help Alex kill the Monster using Michael’s body as his personal meat suit.

It’s been days since the Monster admitted that Michael was no longer alive in there, and Alex still can’t bring himself to look at it in the face.

The plan is simple. The Monster loves to play with Alex, probably because of the excruciating face that Alex makes whenever he’s reminded that this isn’t Michael, and Alex sometimes enables it because he’d prefer the Monster to be fixated on him than tearing apart through an entire city block’s worth of people.

Maria and the Monster appear together and she looks a little worse for wear, but she gives Alex a smile when he looks at her.

The Monster smiles when it sees Alex and lets go of Maria to saunter forward.

“Alex!” it exclaims happily, and it makes Alex’s fingers twitch.

He really doesn’t want to be doing this.

***

Isobel corners him in the kitchen only five hours after she kicked open the door inside of his head and rummaged through his underwear drawer.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks voice smooth, but Alex can just make out a tremor in her fist.

She doesn’t like being left out of things.

Especially if those things involved Michael or Max.

“Because it wasn’t any of your business,” Alex says setting down the bowl of cereal he’d just served himself on the counter.

“It’s Michael,” she says giving him an incredulous look. “So it’s definitely my business.”

“Not about this,” Alex says firmly. “And besides it’s not like _he_ knows.”

Isobel immediately deflates blinking at him several times before she gives him a disbelieving look.

“So, you mean to say that you remember all of the timelines we lived through where you’ve fallen in love with Michael and he with you, and you vaguely remember the night you guys had sex in this one that you used as an excuse to push him away, and,” she continues, moving closer to Alex until she has him trapped against the kitchen counter. “You remember an entire lifetime you technically didn’t live through where you live happily ever after, and you still didn’t put him out of his misery?”

Alex blinks at her before he very gently pushes her back so that he can breathe without inhaling her ridiculously expensive perfume.

“He knows about the lifetime in another time one,” Alex says slowly. “But not the others, and it’s not like it actually matters. When those memories came back to us, I wanted to stop running, but he didn’t want me.”

Isobel looks at him intently, eyes darting between his as if trying to see how serious he is without actually reading his mind. He can feel the slight pressure of her presence at his shields, but that’s a thing that always happens while talking to Isobel.

“That _idiot_,” she says so vehemently that Alex jumps. “We are getting that Thing out of him and then I am going to murder him for being an absolute bonehead.”

***

The Thing wearing Michael’s face tilts his blood splattered face in Alex’s direction and gives him a cruel smile.

“There’s nothing to give back,” it says and the words chill Alex to the bone.

“Nothing?” he questions dreading the answer.

The smile turns a bit more childish. “Yes. I’m all alone in here. It’s pretty roomy.”

“So Michael is-?” Alex starts slowly feeling as though the entire world is slowing to a stop.

“Dead? Yes,” it says and laughs and laughs and then grabs Alex’s hand.

“Come on,” it says smiling at Alex with Michael’s eyes, eyes that Alex will never see again light up full of love in his direction. “Let’s go play.”

***

Alex looks at the letter in his hands curiously and then at Michael who is looking down at the bottle he’d just opened. The smell sharp and bitter with traces of fruit, reminding Alex of nail polish remover, but milder.

It’s the smell that’s the catalyst.

Alex stumbles, and Michael helps him sit back down on the steps leading up to the thrones.

He barely feels it when Michael stumbles down to sit next to him.

He’s lost in the influx of memories, but he manages to integrate them faster than Michael does.

Probably because he has thirty-nine other timelines stuffed inside of his head.

He’s blinking his eyes rapidly as he looks down at the letter in his hands.

Michael inhales sharply, and laughs a little brokenly.

“So that-” he starts.

“-happened? Yeah,” Alex finishes looking at the paper in his hands.

“It was kind of-” Alex starts this time.

“-beautiful,” Michael says on a sigh before he laughs and this time it sounds more like a sob.

Alex feels startled and like Michael is remembering things that he’s not, because everything that Alex can see, can _feel_ tells him that he’s being an idiot. That he’s been an idiot. It doesn’t matter if he lost him thirty-nine times before except in this one timeline that he decided not to give them a chance, because obviously, they’re inevitable.

“So all it takes is to completely leave everything and everyone we know behind for you to actually give us a chance?” Michael says, and it’s obviously a rhetorical question, but Alex starts trying to answer.

“Don’t bother,” Michael says and stands up tossing the bottle aside.

It shatters with a crash, and it takes Alex back momentarily to Michael pressing him against the wall of the tiny kitchen in their tiny cabin, and he can’t seem to find leverage, and his hands are scrambling for purchase, and he topples over several bottles that crash on the floor and spill their contents, but neither of them is paying attention too lost in each other.

Alex gasps coming out of it, and looks at Michael who is watching him with glazed eyes, but once he’s out of it, he’s shaking his head and glaring.

“This is going to be even worse than it usually is,” he says sighing.

“What if it doesn’t have to be?” Alex blurts out standing up.

Michael turns to him and tilts his head, narrowing his eyes. Alex tries not to show how nervous he actually is right now, but Michael has fifty years worth of memories of Alex at the moment.

“What if you ask again, and I say yes,” Alex says taking a step forward.

Michael takes a step back and shakes his head.

“I don’t think so,” he says and Alex feels as though his heart stopped beating in his chest.

Michael scoffs as he takes one look at Alex’s face and turns around facing away from Alex.

“So I ask and you say yes, and then your father shows up and you pretend you don’t even know who I am or Kyle decides not to be an asshole this time and you go off with him wherever it is you go and do whatever it is that you do, I don’t care. You running away everytime I brought up the subject is the least of the reasons why we shouldn’t be together. Apparently, it only works if we don’t have any other choice.”

Alex blinks fast and feels the tears wetting his lashes, and he turns away from Michael, pressing a hand over his mouth.

He inhales shakily and nods his head. “Okay, sorry I brought it up.”

He hears Michael move, hears him move closer, and then he’s making a rude sound with his mouth and walking away.

Alex exhales shakily shutting his eyes tight and lets the tears fall down his cheeks.

***

“I don’t believe you,” Max’s voice comes out of the darkness making Alex jump and place a hand over his heart.

Alex tries to figure out what Max could possibly be talking about since he doesn’t trust Alex at all about anything, but he doesn’t have to try too hard. There is only one thing that he could be talking about.

“You believed me easily enough when I told you he was dead,” Alex says and he tries not to sound accusing, but he can’t really help it.

Max gives him a look meant to quell him into submission but it does the same thing to Alex that it does to Michael, make him want to punch Max in the face.

“You already know that possession is Absolute,” Max starts and he has his lecturing tone on, and Alex can just barely resist the urge to groan out loud.

Max stops as soon as he sees Alex’s expression and clears his throat. “The Monster enjoys toying with you. How are you so sure that this isn’t another one of his games?”

“Because I _know_, Michael,” Alex responds hotly.

Max scoffs, “Not anymore than Isobel or me.”

Alex feels anger boiling in his veins and the clouds outside start to gather dark and heavy, rolling with thunder.

Max casts an apprehensive look towards the windows, but he doesn’t back down.

“Fine,” Alex says and a flash of lightning illuminates the world before the clouds disperse rapidly leaving behind the clear blue sky once again. “Get Isobel. We’re doing this right now.”

***

Alex shudders as he comes out of another memory involving Michael and opens his eyes to see that while he’d been out of it, the Monster had noticed.

It was standing way too close, eyes too detached and still they were _Michael’s_ eyes.

Something shifted in them and before Alex could stop it, their mouths were pressed together.

Alex’s breathing hitched, and something painful and sharp lodged in his throat.

He exhales shakily and the Monster pulls away tilting its head shrugging. “I don’t see the appeal.”

It’s gone before Alex can do or say anything.

***

Alex lasts all of three weeks.

Which he thinks is admirable in the face of the fact that Michael spent 99.9% of the time wearing his shirt like a rag around his collar.

Michael also spent that time giving Alex looks from beneath his curls hanging in his face, and Alex spent at least 99.9% of the time asking himself why this was a bad idea again.

Three weeks and what breaks him isn’t even that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

He knows that he’s been skittish around Michael since he woke up naked in his bed, and he knows that skittish is the mildest way that he could possibly put that. Especially given the fact that their group of Beast Slaying, World Saving, Questing to Bring Magic Back, friends is practically inseparable.

And he knows that Michael knows that his leg bothers him at nights, especially given the fact that they share a bed.

Michael pressing the salve that he’d made by hand to soothe the ache into Alex’s hands one night was too much.

Alex was only human.

He drops the tin on the floor and it lands with a dull clang. Michael’s injured, “Hey-” he cuts off with his mouth, turning and pressing in close.

It’s almost like muscle memory. Alex doesn’t have to think too hard how to kiss Michael to get him to kiss him back.

He doesn’t have to try too hard either, since from the second their lips touch, Michael surges up, fingers tangling in Alex’s hair and he pulls Alex in close, biting against his mouth and kissing him hard and rough and like it’s been years.

Michael kisses him, pressing him back until Alex is the one pressed down against the scratchy wool sheets of their bed, and he gasps pulling away to breathe, panting into the air as Michael’s mouth drags across his chin and down his neck.

“Ask me,” Alex gasps as Michael bites into his neck.

Michael stops, mouth pressed against Alex’s throat, so still that it almost seems like he’s frozen instead of just not moving.

He pulls away a little and looks down at Alex, staring into his eyes.

He inhales deeply and leans down a little, “Do you-?”

Alex cuts him off.

“Yes,” he says and drags Michael back down on top of him by his hair.

***

The Monster takes another step towards Alex, and then it sways, almost like it’s going to faint, but catches itself immediately.

It looks at Alex, blinking rapidly, and Alex reaches out a hand. “Come on.”

The Monster smiles again, but there is something different about it that Alex can’t quite put his fingers on, but that makes his heart start racing.

“Alex,” it breathes, and it sounds reverent, and it’s eyes are shining with a depth of emotion that is confusing Alex.

He’s never seen anything but murderous glee in the Monster.

“Alex, it’s me, Michael.” It says, and Alex feels as though someone pressed a block of ice to the back of his neck.

“Stop playing around,” Alex says a little too sharply. “You promised no games.”

“No,” it says and steps forward fast, stopping Alex before he can back away.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alex can see Liz moving forward with the cup of their Monster Killing Potion in her hands.

“Alex,” it says putting his hands on Alex’s shoulders and then sliding them up to his neck, cupping his face in it’s hands, fingers pressed into his hair. “It’s me.”

Alex starts to tremble in it’s hold. He doesn’t know where it’s getting the idea to do these things from, but Alex hopes that when it dies it hurts like a motherfucker.

“I’m alive,” it says hurriedly, _desperately_ and Alex stops trying to pull away. “And once you get this thing out of me. I will ask you again, do you understand me?”

Alex breath hitches and he looks into Michael’s eyes, and all he sees is love, love, love.

He gasps and his hands fly up to wrap around his wrists.

“Michael,” he breathes unable to actually believe it.

Michael smiles at him, and Alex can see what the difference is now. It’s love.

And then he’s swaying again, and Alex sees Liz getting ready to throw the potion.

“No!” he yells and pushes him out of the way.

Alex gets drenched in the potion. Michael stumbles back and Alex sees the moment It takes him over again, because It gives Alex an unreadable look at disappears.

Liz exhales harshly and Maria makes a restless noise.

“Now what?” Liz says.

“Michael’s alive,” Alex breathes, and refuses to think about anything else, even when the Monster reappears demanding an explanation.

***

Technically, as a First Year, Alex isn’t supposed to be greeting other First Years and showing them where to take the Test, but since he’s basically lived in the halls of Brakebills his whole life, he’d been sent down to gather their last straggler.

Alex leans against the sign at the entrance of the school and feels jittery with excitement and nerves.

This time he swore would be different.

And maybe, to make it really different he should’ve told the Dean to send someone else to get the last student, but every reset leaves him feeling like he hasn’t seen his friends in years, and Michael is the one that he misses the most.

He squints his eyes looking in the direction that he knows Michael will be walking in, and spots him almost as soon as he starts searching.

The smile that breaks out on his face is wild and uncontrollable.

He’s able to tamp it down by the time Michael makes it to him, eyes wide with wonder, but full of skepticism.

Just like always.

“Michael Guerin,” he says not looking at the card with Michael’s name on it but tossing it aside.

Michael’s eyes go to him, and they widen a little as he takes Alex in from head to foot.

It always leaves him tingling, feeling that stare on him for the first time.

But he swore this time was going to be different.

“Yeah,” Michael finally says taking his eyes off Alex and looking around the campus and then back to Alex as though he’s the most interesting thing in the place, and not the fact that he stumbled down a dark alley in New York and ended up here in the bright field of a University Campus. “And who are you?”

Alex can’t help the smile at the flirtatious sound of Michael’s words. “Alex,” he says, and then bites his lip before turning and walking.

He’s almost halfway there when he turns to see that Michael hasn’t moved, watching Alex walk away.

Predictable.

“Come on, you’re already making us late.”

Michael tilts his head at him, and then runs after him.

Alex turns back around and keeps walking sure that Michael is going to be following him.

***

After giving everyone a stone to place right in front of them, Isobel turns to Alex.

“You’re going to have to be very careful,” she starts once again as though they haven’t explained how the spell is going to work a million times already. Alex just wants to hurry up and try and get this over with.

“I know,” he cuts her off.

Isobel gives him an insolent look. “You have the most memories of Michael out of all of us.”

Max makes a protesting noise, but everyone ignores him.

“And you were the one to bond the most with the Monster,” she continues. “It’s going to pull on you the hardest, you have to resist it.”

“I know,” Alex says again this time looking at Isobel intently. “I know the risks. We went over everything. I know what I have to do. I’m not going to mess this up, okay? I want him back just as much as you.”

Isobel looks at him back with intense eye contact and then nods her head slowly.

“Let’s do this,” she says.

They’d practiced this several times already so it’s pretty easy to do the movements seamlessly and mostly in sync. The tricky part comes when they all clasp hands completing the circle and their stones glow in front of them.

The Monster isn’t happy.

Michael’s powers go haywire, but they’d planned for this.

Max’s shield holds up really well, even though most of his energy is concentrated in the spell.

Alex watches Michael’s body twitching like he’s in the middle of a seizure and he wishes that he could cross into the circle and help him deal with this.

Until then, the pull of the spell hadn’t been all that difficult.

Hard, yes, but not anything that Alex couldn’t handle.

He vaguely remembers Isobel telling him that they needed to keep their thoughts as clear as possible, that Michael would be doing most of the work, but emotions always made things more difficult.

Alex feels it when the spell latches on to him, and feels it when it lets go of everyone else.

“No!” Liz yells since she and Isobel are the only two that really know what’s happening.

Isobel yells that they have to keep the circle intact, and yells that Alex has to let go.

Alex can barely hear her. He can’t even see her.

He’s in a dark room, surrounded by mist and wind is whipping everywhere.

There is a loud unearthly sounding roar and then he hears Michael’s voice yelling.

“Go away!”

Alex feels his heart thudding in his throat and he stumbles towards it.

He stumbles and suddenly the darkness lifts and the mist disperses and there is Michael.

Michael’s eyes widen when he sees him. “Alex,” he says sounding shocked and dismayed.

Before Alex can say anything he’s surrounded by darkness.

He hears Michael yelling from far away.

_“I know you wanted to save him, but you don’t have to hurt me to do it.”_

“You shouldn’t have lied to me then,” Alex snaps back.

There is cold laughter, and Alex feels icy frostbite trailing down his spine.

_“How about this? I’ll leave like he wants me to, but only if you make room for me inside your head.”_

“Only if you promise that you won’t hurt any of my friends, and that we’ll go very far away from them.”

_“You have to say the magic words.”_

Suddenly the cold and the darkness is gone, and Alex sways but Michael catches him.

“Leave him alone,” he says voice echoing with power and golden and so pure and warm that it makes the breath catch in Alex’s lungs. “And get out of my head!”

Alex is thrown back into his body with what feels like a physical slam, he rocks back hard, and is only kept from falling backwards by Liz and Maria’s deathgrip on his fingers.

He’s shuddering and he opens his eyes, blinking rapidly, feeling like he’d been floating in the Arctic Ocean.

The stones in front of everyone shine brightly and then burst into sparks and crystals so small they disintegrate immediately.

As quickly as it all began it stops, and Michael just lies there in the middle of the circle so still that it almost seems like he’s-

Alex gasps again, still trembling, fingers gripping Maria and Liz tightly. Isobel is looking at him from across the circle with a furious expression, but he knows it’s only so that she doesn’t look at Michael’s too still body.

Max inhales to speak, but then grunts softly in pain and doesn’t say anything.

Alex’s eyes drop from Isobel back to Michael and he wants to move and check and make sure but he can’t, can’t, _can’t_.

He can’t bury Michael again. He won’t be able to handle it.

Just then, Michael gasps, sitting up suddenly, eyes wide open, and then he drops back on the floor, breathing rapidly, making little gasping sounds like he’s not sure how to make his lungs work.

Isobel is the first one moving, tearing her hands from Maria and Max and crawling across the floor and lying on top of Michael.

Max moves more cautiously, and it’s only when Michael puts his hand on Isobel’s head and gently moves his fingers through her hair that he moves and collapses on Michael’s other side.

Liz and Maria move close to each other, smiling and hugging.

Alex slumps down on the floor, pressing his face to the ground, feeling tired and exhausted and _relieved_. He turns his face to watch, because he doesn’t want to take his eyes off Michael, and isn’t entirely surprised to see Michael staring right back at him.

***

The Monster tilts its head in Alex’s direction, and rolls its eyes when Alex refuses to look at it.

“Why did it matter anyway? So I lied. It’s not like you haven’t lied to me.”

Alex’s eyes finally snap to it. “It’s not the same thing.”

It rolls its eyes again and looks at Alex with a sneer. “He tried to kill me. Of course I lied. I want him dead.”

Alex’s eyes flash and he takes an involuntary step forward. “You better not do anything to harm him.”

“Or what?” it says in amusement looking at Alex like one might look at a child.

“Or I’ll make sure that you live out the rest of your days in neverending torment.”

The Monster tilts its head considering. “Why is he so important to you?”

Alex swallows down the first words that pop into his head because those words he’s saving for Michael.

He looks at the Monster in the eyes, and it hurts to know that Michael is somewhere in there unable to look back. “Because he is. And there isn’t anything that I wouldn’t do to keep him safe.”

The Monster yawns in his face. “Bo-ring.” And then it’s gone.

Alex lets out a breath and looks up straight into Maria’s eyes who is looking at him like she’s finally figured out what’s been bothering her about him for years.

“What?” he asks feeling self conscious.

She just shakes her head and leaves the room.

***

What Alex is remembers is this:

Michael cheeks flushed and warm, gazing at Alex from way too close.

Isobel is asleep right next to him, and one of Michael’s legs is thrown over his and they’re laughing and there is wine and Alex is feeling very loose and fuck, he’s horny, and he knows that Michael would scratch that itch so well. He has memories upon memories upon memories.

And he remembers what happens this night, always in snatches of colors, and skin, and sweat, and _heat_.

He licks his lips. He can just barely taste Michael’s skin on his tongue.

“Alex,” Michael says voice low and throaty, and Alex’s eyes fall to him, and he sees how Michael is watching him, and feels it hit him in the stomach like a two by four.

This was the reason why he’d asked Isobel to join them today. Because he’d hoped that she’d be able to put a buffer between him and Michael.

But no, she was asleep, and Michael was looking at him with those eyes that said that he wanted to eat Alex alive, and Alex really, really, _really_ wanted to let him.

The last thing Alex remembers clearly is saying that he needs to go to bed.

Everything else is the same as always.

Michael pushing him into his closed door, his head knocking back against the wooden frame. Michael’s hands hot and damp and tight around his wrists. Michael biting kisses down Alex’s neck, leaving behind bright blooms of pain. Michael’s mouth sucking a bruise into the crease of his groin before sliding his mouth hot and wet to the base of Alex’s cock. Michael pressed in close, over him, under him, inside of him, surrounding him, overwhelming and hot and real and so _easy_.

The next clear thought he has is waking up with Michael pressed close in front of him, and he remembers watching him sleeping, before he’d slipped away from the bed determined not to become the thing that made Michael lose focus and get himself killed.

***

A couple more drinks and Michael is sitting beside Alex, thighs pressed together, one arm pressed along the back of the couch behind Alex, the other holding his drink in the air as he gesticulates as he tells Alex an outrageous story that Alex has heard maybe five times before, but he loves the way that Michael gets excited when he tells it.

Michael stops abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and Alex blinks and tries not to look like he’d just been staring at him.

Michael sets his drink down on the floor beside himself and looks at Alex.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Michael says. Alex opens his mouth to speak, but Michael holds his hand up. “Let me finish.”

Alex just nods his head slowly.

“It’s not like it’s a new thing. You avoiding me,” he continues, and Alex bites down on his lip so that he doesn’t say anything. “But you had a much better reason this time, so I let it slide.”

Alex huffs out a breath.

“And we’ve been trying to save the world, again, and that comes first.”

The laugh is more apparent this time, and he feels Michael move his arm closer, pressing his forearm to Alex’s neck.

“But there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he says and Alex’s entire world slows to a stop.

He looks at Michael, and nothing else exists.

He watches all of the pain and hurt and caring and kinship and love, love, _love_ that is shining in Michael’s eyes as he looks at Alex, lips parted trying to form the question that he keeps asking and Alex keeps running away from.

Alex knows that Michael feels that the ball is in his court since he was the one to reject Alex before.

But Alex, Alex doesn’t care, not when Michael is still looking at him like he’s the most amazing thing he’s ever seen in a world where magic exists.

“Do you want me, Guerin?” he asks voice low and as seductive as he can manage.

It most definitely works since Michael’s mouth drops, and the emotions in his eyes are leached away until only desire and lust remain.

But Alex still isn’t done. He remembers Michael’s words just like it was yesterday.

“Do you want to date me? To be my boyfriend, my lover, my everything. I feel like the whole world was frozen until you breathed fire into me. So tell me, do you want me?”

“Alex,” Michael says voice hushed and hoarse.

Alex licks his lips. “I should’ve said yes then, but I was so scared of losing you.”

Michael leans in pressing their foreheads together. “I should’ve asked you after we remembered, but I was scared too, that you would change your mind.”

“Never,” Alex says shaking his head and closing his eyes.

He feels Michael’s fingers on his face, tilting his chin slightly, and Alex gasps, eyes opening as he watches Michael’s shut as he leans in closer.

Their lips brush, once lightly, and then someone drops to the couch behind them.

“Gross,” Max says as he wraps an arm around Michael and tugs him away from Alex.

“You’ve been hogging the Guest of Honor,” Isobel says pushing Alex until she can slide in between them and lie back on Michael’s shoulder, throwing her legs over Alex’s lap.

Michael looks at him, and Alex just smiles fondly and leans back against Max’s leg, wrapping his hand around Isobel’s ankle and listening to her talk about Liz and Maria being wet blankets and going to sleep early.

He watches Michael and Max talking softly to one another, and closes his eyes feeling for the first time in what feels like forever, content, and happy, and safe.


End file.
